


you are the smell before rain (you are the blood in my veins)

by Morte_Sangriz



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Bisexual Solas (Dragon Age), Butterfly Effect, Complicated Relationships, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Heavy Angst, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Slow Burn, Time Travel Fix-It, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26913178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morte_Sangriz/pseuds/Morte_Sangriz
Summary: Lahlas did not want to be a hero, wanted nothing more than to play his lute and stay alive.The Conclave changes that.It changeseverything.And so he saves the world, only to watch it come to an end at the hands of the man he loved.It should have been the end. He should have stayed dead. Instead he wakes up in the past with a knowledge that he cannot let things end the same way, he knows what will happen and so he can fix it- even if it means losing what he holds dearly once more.Except, there's a difference between this world and his own.In this world, he is not Inquisitor.
Relationships: Fen'Harel | Solas/Original Male Character(s), Male Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	you are the smell before rain (you are the blood in my veins)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my mandatory Solas/OC fic, with the tropes I love the most thrown in there. I'm excited to write about Lahlas and to show more of that first timeline, as well of this new timeline!

"Is this what you wanted!?” Lahlas snarls and clutches at the dagger in his gut. Blood floods his mouth and it tastes like regret and despair, it tastes like guilt and sacrifice. It tastes like failure. Lighting sizzles on his tongue and it’s unnatural, it makes his skin crawl. “Is this what you sacrificed _everything_ to accomplish!?”

The sky is falling, he thinks, watching in a horror way as the green of the Veil crumbles and falls to the earth like stained glass toppling from the windows of the tallest spire. Lahlas inhales, tastes the blood and bile and ash in his mouth- tastes the magic electrifying the air around him and wants to scream. 

The Veil is falling. The world is fire and ash and blood. There is magic pulsing in his veins, carving pathways into his flesh, it burns hotter than the pain in his belly- hurts more than the dagger killing him. He’s never been able to use magic, it’s part of the reason that he was weary of the mages- of why he sided with the Templars, of why he’s sure this is the end of the world. 

People don’t just _wake_ up able to use magic after living their entire life without. It's unnatural- just as unnatural as this viridian sky stretched overhead.

Everything is a sickly, vibrant green. He has never loathed a color as much as he does now, has never felt such hatred as he does watching the heavens crack open like an egg and the Fade drip into reality. It's changing him, as much as it can change a dying man, and he trembles as lightning sparks on his skin- terrified of this part of himself that has been born anew. 

All that fighting for nothing, he mourns, all this agony only to lose in the end. All that fighting, only to lose himself in the end. 

The world that surrounds him is a gutted one, ravaged by war and destruction. The world that surrounds him is crumbling, it’s tearing itself apart to accommodate the new facet of reality that has been pressed upon it- creating a place for all this uncontained magic to freely flow. 

The earth shakes violently with every chunk of the Veil that drops to the ground like the titans themselves are clawing their way out of the Deep Roads- awakened from their slumber by the end of the world. There are veil fires erupting from places where reality and the Fade collide. 

It’s all so disgustingly green.

The Veil is falling and the world burns. 

The Veil is falling and he is the only one left, or at least that’s how it seems, here alone, a blade in his gut, the world crumbling- with the man that caused this as his only company. 

“Why didn’t you kill me back then? You had a thousand chances to do it, hell, I would have done it myself if I had known this was how it was going to end. Why weren’t we enough for you!? Why wasn’t I-“ he cuts myself off, heart stuttering painfully in his chest, choking on the words. 

The words of his mother ring in his ears, repeated to him for the entirety of his childhood, a common phrase, an omen for how his life would end. 

_“Don’t let the Dread Wolf catch your scent,”_ she had warned, stroking his hair, hands calloused but so gentle. “ _B_ _e careful of who you trust, Lahlas.”_

She taught him how to fill the air with the sound of music, how to be unseen and unheard, until he wanted otherwise. Oh, how she had done all she could to teach him to survive in the world- and Lahlas had trampled over her teachings for the sake of love.

What would she have done if she could see him now, broken in body and heart, agonized over a man who was a never simply a man, a god in disguise come to tear the world asunder?

Would she weep over him, would she cry with him, mourning the happiness he thought he held in his hands for a mercurial moment- lamenting the death that awaited him? Or would she spurn him, turn her back on her foolish son who fell in love with the Great Betrayer himself? 

He had given Solas his heart without question, and pain is what had awaited him. 

Pain and death and war and ruin. 

“I wish I never met you,” he says, tears dripping from his eyes, angry and devastated that in the end, it had come to this, that he wasn’t enough to stop Solas from destroying everything. “I wish that I had run instead of taking your hand that day. I wish that we had never met, that you hadn’t played me like a fucking fool from the beginning. ” 

His wounds are like fire in his flesh, like his body knows that this is the end- that there is no coming back from the injuries, not this time. He doesn’t think he's ever been so ready to die, not after spending his entire life clinging to existence so desperately that he fought against false gods to continue on.

“Do you know that I have thought about you every day since you left?” Lahlas says, blood loss making his head spin and his voice fall a little quieter, a little less angry. He feels loss so keenly that he wants to let his jaws fall open and wail into the frigid air, to let the world hear his pain one last time. 

In his tunneling vision, he looks at Solas and it’s unfair just how beautiful he is, even with the taint of the red lyrium present in his skin, even covered in ash and blood. He is regal. He is sublime. 

He looks like the god he never wanted to be- Fen’Harel, the God of Rebellion. 

Fen’Harel, The God of Betrayal. 

Lahlas topples over, spine hitting the ground with a heavy thud and a pained gasp of air tearing from his cracked lips. He curls into his side, like a child fearful of what the night holds, gaze blurred and hazy. 

This time when he speaks, the words are choppy, trembling with sobs that he doesn’t bother holding back. He thinks he might choke on his own blood, or drown in it as he gulps down frantic breaths, “Do you think that if we had met in another life, at another time, we could have made this work? Do you think there was ever any hope for us at all?”

Of course, there is no answer. 

The Dread Wolf has been slain, after all, there is no one left to watch the end of the world with Lahlas now. Solas lies dead beside him, eyes shut and lips parted and looking so peaceful that if not for the sickening tinge of the world, the quaking of the earth underneath him, and the blood pooling from his wound to the grass underneath- Lahlas would think he was just sleeping. 

Lahlas can’t help but reach out the only hand he has left to cup his cold face. 

It’s harder than it should be, simply moving a limb; but he’s dying, he knows that, has known it would happen from the moment he met Solas’s eyes from across the battlefield glowing with the taint of the red lyrium, face set into a hard and unchanging mask. 

_“Vhen’an” he had begged, desperate and breaking apart and still stupidly hopeful, “Please, you don’t have to do this. This isn’t the way things have to go. We don’t have to fight.”_

_Even though they had known it was too late, the two of them lived a single moment, an entire lifetime with the lingering glance they shared- and it was then, watching as red overtook the blue eyes he had fallen in love with- as Solas tore his gaze away first, hardening his heart right before his eyes that Lahlas knew what had to happen._

_He cut down waves of enemies, all his people, legions of elves fighting for a cause they didn't understand- just for a chance to be free, just to no longer be trampled underfoot, no longer abused and abandoned and hunted._

_The thing is, in another life, if he had never been Inquisitor, before the truth of Fen’Harel came to light Lahlas would have been willing to follow such a cause- bring back what was stolen from their people, revert the world to what it had been._

_But in this life, Lahlas had a duty to see this threat to the world come to an end. In this life, Lahlas was the only remaining of his Inner Circle, the only left to fight the Dread Wolf come to rip the world into shreds for the glimpse of the past. He fought to appease the ghosts of the people he had loved, who had burrowed into his bones and cemented his resolution to end it all at last._

_The battle was long and arduous. His people fell just as quickly as Fen’Harel’s, bodies piling up on the blood slicked ground- so many lives lost just because Lahlas hadn’t been strong enough to put a stop to Solas before things escalated to this point. He felt sick._

_If he had been better- if he had been willing to put the world before his heart then things wouldn’t have been as disastrous. So many had died for his mistakes._

_Even… even his friends._

_When is a life worth a life? When did he sink so deep into depravity as to let his friends die, to let them be cut down in front of him after swearing to himself to protect what remained of them? When had he become such a failure, before or after love for the enemy warped who he was?_

_“Solas,” he had snarled, “Die with me, won’t you?”_

_Even as the dagger sunk into his gut, he didn’t hesitate, not this time._

_He plunged his own blade deep into Solas’s heart and watched as the love of his life took a shuddering breath and for a moment, his eyes flickered back to the endless blue of the open skies and there was such tenderness and remorse that Lahlas stumbled back in horror at what he had done._

_But there were no other words that would escape him and Solas died before he could say a single thing, crumbling to the ground like a man and not a god._

_And then Lahlas was alone in the ravaged battlefield._

He sobs and sweeps his thumb across Solas jaw, smearing his blood, a red streak on pale skin, remembering all the kisses he had placed on this very spot, all the times he had made this same motion to receive a tender smile in return. 

What kind of victory is this? What kind of victory is a pointless one? Defeating the enemy only for the world to end regardless, killing the love of his life just for the sky to fall around them either way? Was any of it worth it? The battles, the pain, the deaths? 

When had this quest to stop Solas lost its purpose? 

When had it become too late to change the way it would end?

His heart stammers. The space between thumps is full of brilliant pain, burning as bright as the veil fire setting the forest aflame around him. He can feel himself dying, can feel his heart speeding up in his chest, working harder to pump his blood through his veins- knowing that soon his heart will give out. 

He’s dying, he’s dying… 

He doesn’t want to die alone.

"Solas," he whispers, voice a wretched agonized thing, coming from the lining of a bloody throat, " _’Ma’Vhen’an_ , _Ir abelas_." 

The ground shakes and the force of it bounces him up and down painfully, the trees colliding against each other with frightful crashes, uprooted and destroyed. The world trembles, and the sky falls, and the forest burns, and Lahlas holds onto his dead lover as the earth tears itself open. 

A fissure blooms from the space between him and Solas- and the grass underneath them ripping open into a black, hungry maw. Lahlas holds on to Solas with desperation, vision flickering, losing what little strength remains in his body to grasp Solas tight. But he is just a man, just an exhausted dying elf trying to cling to something familiar as the world comes to an end, and so when the darkness widens, there is nothing he can do as Solas is stolen from his grasp. 

_“Solas!”_

He is screaming. He wants to look away from this, from this destruction of the last comfort he had in his dying moments- but he can’t tear his eyes from the sight of the ground swallowing his lover whole and then expanding its crumbling edges to reach him. 

The edge of the world is dark and empty, mirroring what his heart must look like- bleak, starving, monstrous; and as he falls into the void, he imagines that the void falls into him as well. 

Solas is falling with him, just a little ways down. The sky is still a revolting green. 

That’s the last thing he sees. 

He dies somewhere in the darkness. 

.

.

.

He’s not sure if he ever hits the bottom or not.

* * *

He wakes up screaming and- 

Dust dances in the stream of golden light seeping from the fractured window. The worn padding under his back is nearly threadbare, he can feel the uneven planks of the shack against the knobs of his spine. This shithole shack, he hasn’t been here in years, since before the Conclave, since he left it behind and got swept up into saving the world. 

And after everything was done, there was nothing left for him besides hunting Solas and trying to save the world once more, a simple man carrying the weight of the world, the world that he failed in the end. He wonders for a moment if it was all just a dream, a horrible, awful world he imagined in his sleep. 

The world is still standing, there are still singing birds. Outside his thin door the grime and filth of the slums awaits. He still remembers the feeling of falling, falling, _falling_ into the darkness. Sees the green of the Fade behind his eyelids, still remembers the burning of the hole in his belly and the desolation of a battlefield. 

He remembers being the only one left. 

He wants it to all have been a dream but-

The life he had lived howls in defiance, _‘Remember me. Do not forget what was.’_

His heart aches. He weeps for the things he had lost, the friends that had died, the world that had crumbled. He weeps for the love he had died for, the destruction that came no matter what. His hands cover his face as he gasps, ragged frantic breaths.

And he yanks his hands away, staring at them through tear blurred eyes, shellshocked- hands, two of them. He hasn’t felt anything but phantom agony in his left hand for years, since he got that cursed mark and had it torn from him within the embrace of his lover- his killer. 

This is what pushes him past that thin line of disbelief, what makes him know that somehow he died and somehow is here, before an ancient magic claimed his arm as a sacrifice, as it spread like ink in water- before he lost _everything_. His first love was never Solas, no matter what way Varric phrased it in his novels- and it wasn’t in any of the flings he had before he let the Dread Wolf steal his heart. 

No, he- _Lahlas_ \- has been in love with music since he was a small boy. He never would dream of losing it, of having his loss rubbed into his face every time he set foot into a tavern. Of never being able to explain just how much pain shot up his arm every time he tugged on a string, or how with every rift he closed, his fingers became just the slightest bit number. Until he could no longer hold anything in his left hand. 

The world was ending and then it wasn’t, and then it _did._

How could he mourn when he had to save the world, when he was so busy keeping himself from burning up that the words just never came? Lahlas curls around his arm like he’s protecting it, heaving painful sobs that start from his broken heart and resonate through every one of his bones. 

It’s as he cries, as he lets out all the sorrow- he lets out all the pressing despair that has haunted him since he held Solas, since the Fade melted into reality and the world came to a destructive end. It’s as he mourns and trembles and just lets it all _out_ that frost spreads across the ground, that the temperature drops until his breath hangs in the air and that jagged spikes of ice erupt.

His breath catches, eyes wide. 

But there's no question as to what this is, of who could have caused this. 

This is magic, plain and simple. 

The thing is: in his first life, Lahlas couldn’t use magic…

At least not until the very end. 

.

.

.

He wakes with the taste of ashes and blood in his mouth. 

He wakes up with both his hands, at a time before anyone knew his name, before gods showed they were more than just legends. 

He wakes up from killing the only man he had ever loved, from watching as the sickening green of the Fade tore into reality, as the fire of mana carved a path into his veins. 

He wakes up and the room freezes with his despair; uncontrolled, untempered magic spilling from him like blood from an open wound. 

Horror stirs in his gut, it seems the memories aren’t the only thing he’s brought back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hai guys! I hope you enjoy this fic, and let me know what you think so far! Feel free to ask questions on Tumblr at: 
> 
> Mortesangrizwrites@tumblr.com
> 
> See ya next time!


End file.
